My g/f car (88 Prelude) has been having a pretty steady vibration in it at highway speeds. I finally got around to having the tire/wheels balanced today, but now I notice a speed dependent, oscillating vibration. It starts about 55MPH and increases in magnitude but not frequency up to 70 (as high as I took it). The vibration doesn’t change if it is in gear or out/ clutch in or out. Obviously it is something in the suspension. Car has 201Kmi on it, what do you guys think? Bushings, tie rod end? I’m going to get it on the lift this weekend to take a look, but wanted some ideas of what to look for.
Robin
P.S. I know it’s not an Integra but hondaprelude.com is down for good and it is still a Honda after all, even if the suspension is a little different design.
Ah, I did forget to mention that.
No, It does not seem to be related to the brakes. It doesn’t change when I brake at that speed, the rotors are straight (no vibration when stopping) and the calipers don’t seem to be binding or dragging at any point either.
Maybe a bearing? I’ve never had one go out before, but the wheels feel stable when you push/pull on them.
All lug nuts are torqued to 80ft lbs (from when I retorqued them after getting the car home from discount tire-they tend to torque honda wheels anywhere from 90-100 ft/lbs when they do it) so that shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
It sounds like the wheels just may not have been balanced all that well. It happens.
I do remember reading something on a Miata site about the mysterious 70mph shimmy that plagues all Miatas, and even though they never came to a final conclusion, decided it was pretty much just bad wheel/tire balancing. If you don’t hear any abnormal noises (bearings tend to grind when they go bad) I wouldn’t worry about it.
To check the wheel bearings, just get down on your knees next to the tire. Push and pull on the very top of the tire, towards and away from you, perpendicular to the wheel. If you don’t feel any play, your bearings are most likely okay. Do this for all four wheels.
I really do think it’s just a badly imbalanced wheel/tire, unless you have hit a curb recently or something similar.
A wheel weight may have fallen off during the drive home. Also you may have a bad strut or a broken spring. Check those out as well and good luck. Oh yeah, check for any bulges in the tires, maybe a belt snapped.
Ask her what she did to the car! She hit somthing, or someone did.
Bent rim, bent spendal, or bent subframe. have all these things checked.
I had a vibration and it was coming from the rear wheel bearing. I put some grease back there and it works ine the vibration went away.
She wont get in trouble, just ask her to tell you what she did?
Good luck!
Ok, thanks, evey one understands that this makes a vibration, goes away for a second and comes back, and not a constant vibration, right? I think my use of the word oscillation might have been confusing.
(If she did something to her car, she would have told me)
I have found that sometimes iit is better to just wait until it breaks. “If it works don’t fix it! As Grandpa Fryer use to say!
This has been hard for me because I like things to work the way they should.
When I was under the car last I found a rubber mounted harmonic ballancer on the drive shaft (Driver side) and I thought” I better watch that" because it’s mounted directly to the shaft. And rubber breaks down due to "Oz2.
"What about the cam drive belt could that cause it?
The rubber is torn on the motor mount?
I would clean the car up, get under it and look for shinny parts on the cars drive components, very carefull look at everything on the drive trane drive it untill it does it again and stop and look again. So that if it’s going to break let it. Just stay close to home.
I have also found that car proublems or mechinacal proublems are directly related to proublems in our lives?
Is she having a hard time running at full speed? Is she unballanced and want’s you to fix her? I don’t think it’s possable for the car to fall apartwhile driving. But I would just drive it untill it breaks or I found what the proublem was.
Thats what I would do.
Brian
Yeah, that’s what I’m doing with the wheel bearing noise in my own car, this is a little more annoying than the adverage squeek or shimmy, but I appreciate the phylosophy tips.